First published in English in 1955, this was the first Japanese account of their decisive defeat to be made available to the general public. There has been a great deal of research since then, but modern scholarship shows these authors' judgement to be correct and their use of secret Japanese archives remarkably accurate. This is a classic battle narrative and one of the most important to have come from Japan. Described by the US Navy as 'essential reading in any study of modern naval warfare', it is fundamental to our understanding of the Japanese navy and its dramatic reversal of fortune just six months after Pearl Harbor.